Idaho wants to help manage federal lands

Idahoans may soon have more say about how federal
forestlands are managed. In 1998, the Idaho State Land Board
appointed a group of eight recreationists, teachers, lawyers and
timber company executives to devise ways that locals could work
with the federal government to manage public
lands.

In late February, the committee released
Breaking the Gridlock. The report recommends
creating five pilot projects to test alternative land-management
practices on 10.7 million acres of federal land. The group wants
the lands managed with more feedback from local committees. For
instance, on the Clearwater and Nez Perce national forests, a group
of environmentalists, multiple-users, local governments and tribes
would manage the forests to recover elk, while also increasing
tourism and recreation in the forest, reducing fire danger through
logging, and improving habitat for endangered lynx and
salmon.

"We are talking about active management
of those lands for whatever the public wants from those lands - be
it recreation-based, environmentally based or commodity-based,"
says Bill Myers, chairman of the committee that drafted the
report.

Because the pilot projects would take
place on federal land, Congress must approve the plan. Sen. Larry
Craig, R-Idaho, has volunteered to carry a bill this year that will
implement the report's recommendations.

But
environmentalists say proposed legislation could set a dangerous
precedent. If Congress gives Idaho a set of laws to manage its
national public lands, they say, other states will push for similar
legislation. "This is a takeover," says John McCarthy of the Idaho
Conservation League. "It is a means to limit or eliminate
environmental laws in order to cut more
trees."